


The Anatomy of You and Me

by TheBetterQuibbler



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff and Smut, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-19 10:18:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9435818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBetterQuibbler/pseuds/TheBetterQuibbler
Summary: Sherlock is a cold-hearted machine... or so he thinks. But when John Watson is paired with him in their Anatomy class, everything changes. Suddenly a whole new world of possibilities is opened for both boys. But will life--and self-doubt--get in the way? Only time will tell...





	1. Enter: John Watson

Sherlock liked to believe that he was an unfeeling machine. Capable of ignoring any and all human emotions in favor of completely dedicating himself to both academia and scientific research. He’d told countless people on countless occasions that he considered himself married to his work. His brother, Mycroft, tended to agree with the notion that caring was not an advantage. That sentiment was for the weak. Sherlock hated being in agreement with his brother on anything, but in this case it seemed like they were completely, and rather unfortunately, on the same page.

Which was why Sherlock couldn’t understand why he found himself staring at the blond boy that had just walked into his advanced anatomy lab.

At first, he tried to convince himself that what caught his attention was the fact that the boy was quite obviously a few years older than most of the students in this class. Not by an incredibly wide margin—at most he was 24 years old. He then told himself that he had noticed the cane, something that most twenty-something uni students didn’t normally possess. Then he silently insisted that it must have been the boy’s obvious army background that made him stare quite unabashedly.

But, in reality, it was the boy’s eyes.

The anatomy course was split into two sections: lecture and lab. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays they met in a large lecture hall, where it was nearly impossible to single a person out. That must have been why Sherlock hadn’t noticed the boy on their first day of class. But on Tuesdays and Thursdays they had labs, and each student was assigned a specific lab time (because the class was so large and the lab could not accommodate that many people at once). With the drastically smaller number of people, Sherlock spotted the boy almost as soon as he had walked in.

Sherlock couldn’t keep his eyes from taking in every minute detail about the boy. He was approximately five-foot-six, weighing about 150 pounds. His hair was short, as though it had been buzzed at one point—most likely during his stint in the army—but was now in the process of growing out. He was solidly built, not quite stocky but far from slim like Sherlock. His left hand had a slight tremor, which he was currently trying to discretely stretch out as he smiled and chatted with a slightly obese boy who was gesticulating wildly. His smile seemed sincere enough, but his eyes… There was something more in those blue eyes. Sherlock cocked his head. Normally he would assume some form of PTSD. He’d seen plenty of soldiers who had come back haunted from the war. But, somehow, Sherlock felt that that wasn’t quite what he was seeing in this boy’s eyes.

“Alright, everybody, let’s settle down now,” the professor said, projecting his voice over the clamor of students chatting away amongst themselves. The students who had been standing, like the blond boy, moved to find a seat at a lab table, but the professor said, “Might as well wait, if you’re not already seated. I’ve assigned you all lab partners, whom you’ll be working with from now on.”

The blond boy had been standing quite comfortably only moments before, as if he’d forgotten his injured leg—possibly a psychosomatic limp, then—but now that the professor had brought his attention to the fact that he wasn’t sitting down, the boy shifted his weight uncomfortably from his bad leg to his good one.

“Michael Scott and George Baker, table one. Daniel Freeman and Cynthia Yates, table two…” On and on it went, groups of two being called and taking their seats together, pleasant conversations beginning anew as they began to learn a bit about each other. Sherlock dreaded this, being paired up with some stranger. All people were idiots, and having to act as though a lab partner had any useful input was something he absolutely detested. He eventually had to give up the seat he had claimed when he’d walked into the lab about five minutes before anyone else, much to his irritation. It had been the perfect seat, close enough to all of the lab supplies to get his first pick at anything he might need.

When the name Mike Stamford was called, the overweight boy that the blond boy had been talking to made his way to a table, and Sherlock observed as the blond boy’s lips twitched downward ever so slightly. Obviously he’d been hoping to be paired with his friend, which Sherlock thought was somewhat absurd. The odds hadn’t been in his favor with a group this large. It was already statistically impressive that they’d even ended up in the same lab hour.

Sherlock began to grow somewhat antsy as the professor neglected to call his name. He began counting out the remaining students, hoping that he might end up by himself after all, but was disappointed to find that there was an even number of students. Finally, after another minute of names being called, Sherlock was the only one left. Well, him and—

“John Watson and Sherlock Holmes, table twenty-two.”

Sherlock couldn’t help but note that this was a statistical improbability as well.

He was somewhat disappointed by this turnout. He’d been enthralled, trying to figure out what secrets hid behind this boy’s eyes. Now he would be forced to learn how tedious the boy actually was. Sherlock prepared for the illusion to shatter as he sat down, averting his eyes and flipping open his anatomy book, hoping that his face clearly showed that he would not be entertaining any of this boy’s foolish attempts at partner bonding.

“Hello, then. I’m John.” His voice was detestably chipper.

“I’m aware. The professor just said your name.”

“Right. Well, I didn’t quite catch your name. What was it, again?”

Sherlock rolled his eyes and finally looked up from his textbook, beginning to say “I’m Sherl—” but stuttering as he realized exactly how blue his lab partner’s eyes really were. And how they crinkled up at the corners when he smiled. And how soft his blond hair looked. He then forced himself to snap out of the hypnosis, clearing his throat and trying once again, a look of disinterest plastered onto his face. “I’m Sherlock.”

“Sherlock? That’s an interesting name.”

“I suppose.”

“Well, it’s definitely more interesting than ‘John,’” the boy chuckled.

Sherlock pushed away the urge to smile. Although he was sure that, at any moment, this boy would prove himself to be just as trite and dull as any other university student, in this instant he was actually quite charming. Sherlock wasn’t used to being charmed, and he decided that he didn’t like it one bit.

“Yes, well, my brother’s name is Mycroft, so at least I was suited with the more attractive name.” He paused, and then added, “Though, I am the more attractive brother, so I suppose it’s fitting.”

That earned an outright laugh from the boy—John—and once again Sherlock had to fight the urge to smile. This wasn’t something that he normally did. He didn’t chat up his lab partners. He always made a point to belittle them to the point of tears within the first five minutes, in order to assert the fact that he would be in charge of any and all assignments and that their input was not only unnecessary, but also unwelcome.

John was nodding, his smile crinkling up the corners of his eyes even more than it had been before. “I suppose that is fitting.”

Just then, the professor arrived at their table and handed them a syllabus of what they’d be covering in class for the next fifteen weeks. Sherlock snatched it up and scanned it over before tossing it aside and groaning.

“Not a fan of anatomy?” John asked, still reading over his own syllabus.

“I am. But for once I’d like to learn something new in these classes. Last semester I was forced to take a biology course—I insisted multiple times that it was completely unnecessary, but of course they wouldn’t listen—and you wouldn’t believe the types labs we were forced to do in there. The most trivial, mundane things I’ve ever had the displeasure of experiencing.”

“Are you some sort of genius, then?”

“Don’t insult me. I’m far more intelligent than a genius.”

“And modest, too.”

Sherlock scoffed. “Modesty is for those who care what people think of them.”

“And you don’t?”

“Not in the slightest.”

“Must be nice.”

This was the longest conversation that Sherlock had had with… well, anyone, really. Usually he tended to scare people off within the first few words that came out of his mouth. Usually he didn’t mind. He wondered why this time was different.

He felt like he needed to supply a new topic of conversation to keep them talking—though he didn’t understand why he wanted that—so he said, “Afghanistan or Iraq?”

The smile dropped from John’s face, and he blinked twice in shock. Sherlock wondered if perhaps that was not the correct question to ask, but he figured there was no turning back now.

“I’m sorry?”

“Afghanistan or Iraq?”

“How… How did you…?”

Sherlock winced. Definitely the wrong question to ask. This was the part where he told John everything he saw—his life story, his faults, weaknesses, fears—and was then subsequently punched in the face. He’d been through it many times before.

“The way that you hold yourself implies military training. Most uni students don’t stand with such impeccable posture, and the fact that you’re noticeably older than most of us implies that you’ve been away for a while, unable to continue your schooling until now. So, army. Obvious. And your tan. It stops at your wrists, so you’ve obviously been abroad, but not sunbathing. Your limp is quite telling, as well. It’s bad when you walk but you stand like you’ve forgotten about it, which implies that it’s at least party psychosomatic. Psychosomatic limp implies that the circumstances of the injury were traumatic, which then implies that you were wounded in action. Wounded in action plus tan, Afghanistan or Iraq.”

Once he’d finished his spiel, Sherlock held his breath and waited. He knew what came next. Insults, or possibly tears. Sometimes the impact of knuckles with his cheek or nose. He hoped that John would at least avoid his eyes. The last time someone had given him a black eye, it had swelled up so badly that he’d been unable to look through a microscope for two weeks.

“That was… incredible.”

It took every ounce of self-control that Sherlock had to keep his jaw from hitting the floor.

“What?” was all he was able to stammer out.

“That was absolutely incredible. Did you really figure all of that out yourself?”

Sherlock’s surprise gave way, becoming indignant as his deductive skills were called into question. “Of course I did!”

John laughed, holding his hands up in surrender. “Alright, alright. I was just making sure that Mike hadn’t put you up to this or something. He thinks he’s funny like that.”

“I simply observe,” Sherlock huffed. “People are transparent.”

John nodded, as if this were all perfectly normal to him. “It was Afghanistan, for the record. Do you know anything else about me, then?”

That drew Sherlock up short. He’d never had a person invite him to delve even deeper into their lives.

“I…” He hesitated, but John’s eager face urged him on. “I also know that you want to be a doctor, and that the only reason you joined the army was to impress your father, attempting to placate him after your alcoholic brother disgraced your family.”

At that moment, everybody around them began to leave, the teacher having released them early for the day. John’s eyes were locked onto Sherlock’s, though, and time seemed to stand still as Sherlock waited to see what the boy had to say about this. After a moment, John averted his eyes, scooped his books and phone off of the table, snatched up his cane, and before Sherlock could even comprehend what had happened, he was gone.

Sherlock should have known that it was too good to last.


	2. Amazing. Fantastic. Brilliant.

John had never felt so violated. All of his problems laid bare by some stranger who couldn’t possibly know the things that he did. It wasn’t as though John went to Mike and told him all about his family troubles, about his dad and Harry. The other things, John could assume that his lab partner had asked around, though he hadn’t the faintest idea why the boy would do that or what he could hope to gain from it. But this was too… personal. Of course, he’d called Harry his brother, when she was in fact his sister, but aside from that everything had been spot-on.

When he’d rushed from the lab, as fast as his limp would allow him to go—and, might he add, the limp _wasn’t_ psychosomatic, so that was another thing his lab partner had gotten wrong—he’d heard Mike calling after him, asking him to wait up. But he couldn’t wait. He’d needed to get out of there as quickly as possible. He needed to escape, to breathe fresh air that didn’t smell like formaldehyde.

Outside, it was lightly misting, and the cold droplets soothed John’s burning face. He hadn’t even realized that he’d been flushing. Then again, that was to be expected when one’s secrets were stated as cold, hard fact. But as his embarrassment began to subside ever so slightly, it was replaced by anger. As if it weren’t hard enough for John, being a twenty-three year old in his first year at uni, now there was someone out there who somehow knew some of the most intimate details of his private life. Of course, it was amazing. Fantastic. Brilliant. These words kept running through John’s head, even as the rest of his body decided that the best way to react to this situation was rage. He could feel his blood pressure rising, his ears getting hot, his hands clenching into fists.

Amazing.

Fantastic.

Brilliant.

And suddenly the rage evaporated, and John was left with nothing except for those three words.

Amazing.

Fantastic.

Brilliant.

As he sucked in breath after breath of clean autumn air, allowing the droplets to continue cooling his face, unsure of what to do now in the hour he had until his next class, his eyes fell on none other than his lab partner, exiting the lab with his head down, dark curls hiding his face. Nonetheless, he would recognize that slim frame anywhere.

“Sherlock!” John shouted without a thought, already limping forward to catch up to the boy. He wasn’t even sure what he wanted to say. He could just leave things as they were. They could work in silence for the rest of the semester, without bothering each other or revealing any more hidden details about each other. But, for some reason, John didn’t want that. He wanted to get to know his lab partner a bit more. He wanted to know _how_ Sherlock had known those things about him.

John’s shout brought Sherlock to a standstill for a moment, and then he picked up his pace without looking up, as though he were trying to get away. This irritated John a bit. If it weren’t for his bloody leg, he would already be in stride with the boy. He forced himself to ignore the discomfort and picked up his own pace, and soon he was striding along beside Sherlock.

“Hey. Wait a second. I want to talk to you.”

Sherlock stopped abruptly, causing John to stumble. He quickly righted himself and cleared his throat, looking his lab partner over. Sherlock was still avoiding eye contact with him, opting to stare instead at his loafers. The boy was posh, there was no denying that. Everything he wore was clearly designer, from the black slacks to the purple, silky button-up that fit him so well John assumed that it must have been custom-made. It made John feel a bit frumpy, dressed in his own plaid button-down and wool jumper.

Now that John had Sherlock’s attention, he wasn’t really sure what to say, so he went with, “How’d you know all of that stuff?”

Sherlock finally looked up at John through his long, dark eyelashes. John had been amazed at the color of his lab partner’s eyes the second he’d seen them. They were blue and green and grey all at once.

“I think it’s best if we don’t discuss this anymore.”

John shook his head. “No, I want to know. Did someone tell you? They must’ve.”

Sherlock averted his eyes again, and now John saw it, saw the cause of Sherlock’s hesitancy in continuing their earlier conversation. Sherlock was _frightened_. John couldn’t fathom what the boy could be frightened _of_ , though. It wasn’t as though John had any height on Sherlock. The boy was at least six inches taller than him. He had a bit more muscle, but if Sherlock decided to run away it wasn’t as though John could catch him. And besides, there was no reason for John to hurt his lab partner, anyway. It wasn’t as though he was spreading these secrets around the university. He’d simply told John things he’d already known about his life.

“Nobody told me. Like I said before, I _observed_.”

“But what could there have been to observe? It isn’t as though I carry my family around with me.”

“But you do. You carry them on your face and in your mobile phone.”

“In my… Did you look in my phone? How—”

Now Sherlock looked up, if only so that John could see him roll his eyes. “No, I didn’t look in your phone. I didn’t have to. It was all in plain sight.”

“Alright then, you’ve got to explain. Because I have no idea how you’ve done it.”

Sherlock hesitated, and then seemed to decide to dive in headfirst.

“Your wanting to become a doctor is obvious, between your taking an anatomy class, particularly personable demeanor, and frankly conservative clothing choices. Also, you were using your class schedule as a bookmark, and I noticed a few more biology-centric classes on your list, consistent with a pre-med degree. Of course, you could be considering going into some form of veterinary science, but there isn’t a single strand of animal fur on your pants or jumper, which most animal lovers are commonly found with. Thus, human doctor. General medicine most likely.

“Your brother’s drinking habits could be found on your mobile phone, which you laid face down on the table when you sat. On the back there is an inscription, reading ‘To Harry Watson, Love Clara.’ Obviously, your name is not Harry, so the phone did not originally belong to you. Most likely passed down from a family member, but not your father because the phone is a newer model and, frankly, why would your father give you a brand new phone that would have had to have been given to him from his wife? So then the next most likely candidate is a brother, obviously recently split from his wife, who gifted him with the phone. The fact that they were married is made clear by the expense of the gift. He clearly broke up with her, since he felt the need to get rid of it. If she’d broken up with him he most likely would have kept the phone for sentiment’s sake, but in this case he wanted to simply forget that the relationship had ever happened. The split most likely occurred because of his alcoholism.”

“How could you possibly know about the drinking?” John interrupted, astounded.

“Power connection. There’s scuff marks around the edge of it, which indicates that his hands were shaking every time he went to plug it in. You never see a sober man’s phone with it, never see a drunk’s without it.

“Now, if we match all of the pieces of the puzzle up, we come to my final conclusion. Why would you, somebody who clearly wishes to become a doctor and most likely has dreamed of it since he was young, delay your schooling in order to join the army? After all, most young men who join the army tend to want to make a career out of it. Well, it’s not much of a leap to assume that your brother’s drinking has had some negative affect in your family life, and generally speaking it’s usually the man of the household that has some sort of military background. Doctors—or those who aspire to become doctors—have a habit of wanting to fix things that are broken. So you decided to put aside your own desires in order to appease your father, and what better way to do so than to put on a uniform like he did and march out into battle?”

“That… was…” John searched for the right word. “Amazing.”

Sherlock had turned away after concluding his monologue, but how he glanced back at John with wide eyes, as though he were hesitant to believe that he’d heard John correctly.

“Do you think so?”

“Yes. It was…”

Amazing.

Fantastic.

Brilliant.

“…quite good.”

Sherlock now turned fully to face John. “That isn’t what people normally say.”

“What do people normally say?”

“Piss off.”

John stared at Sherlock for a moment, and then he began to laugh. At first, Sherlock seemed unsure of how to handle this reaction to his deductions, but after a moment Sherlock joined in on the laughter, if a little hesitantly.

“Well, people obviously don’t realize how extraordinary it is.”

“No, they don’t.”

“You did get one thing wrong, though.”

That made Sherlock’s laughter stop short. “What?”

“Harry. She’s my sister. Harry’s short for Harriet.”

Sherlock grimaced. “ _Sister_. There’s always something.”

“Oh, and my limp isn’t psychosomatic, either.”

Sherlock still seemed preoccupied with the revelation of Harry being a girl, and waved off John’s second statement.

“Of course it’s psychosomatic.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Where were you shot?”

“My… my shoulder. But—”

“Obviously psychosomatic.”

John decided that it wasn’t worth it to argue any further. So, instead, he asked, “When’s your next class?”

“Not for another two hours.”

“Excellent. You fancy getting something to eat? I’m starving.”

“I…” Sherlock seemed unsure, and John quickly backtracked.

“I mean, we don’t have to. I just thought…”

“No, no, I… Yes. Food would be good.”

John relaxed a bit. “Alright. What do you like?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never gone out to eat on campus before.”

“Really? What year are you?”

“First year, second semester. I just… Don’t eat a lot.”

“You don’t eat?”

“Digesting slows me down.”

John laughed again. “Alright, well, luckily for you, I know all of the good takeaway places around here. What do you say about Indian?”

Sherlock thought for a moment, and then nodded. “I suppose that would be alright.”

“Excellent. Follow me, then.”


End file.
